


Ash and Sand

by SeerowsKindness



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeerowsKindness/pseuds/SeerowsKindness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lark is always patient with her, making her tea in the mornings when she’s just sitting there staring at the table, moving a hand across her back and saying, “If you ever want to talk.”  But she doesn’t want to talk.</p>
<p>pre-Melting Stones</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash and Sand

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for story_lottery at Livejournal.

Lark is always patient with her, making her tea in the mornings when she’s just sitting there staring at the table, moving a hand across her back and saying, “If you ever want to talk.” But she doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t want Lark to sit there and look at her with those big, beautiful eyes and nod in sympathy. She doesn’t want Lark to know the full extent of what she’s seen.

She’s always protected Lark, which of course makes no sense. Lark is the one who had the hard life. She just dealt with some pirates and then ran away to Winding Circle. But she protects Lark anyway, and Lark doesn’t need to know any of this.

*

With Crane, things are different. Crane never asks her to talk, which she knows is just his sneaky way of manipulating her into talking, so she stops herself from giving him the satisfaction. Instead she lets him prattle on about joining with his plants, the book he read one time at Lightsbridge about war, and the predictions of bad things about to happen that seers are always talking about.

She just rests her head on his shoulder and listens to him talk. Sometimes, she considers bringing up Lark, but she doesn’t know what she would say or why he would care, so she never does. Instead, she lets him thread his fingers through hers like the roots of a tree and goes home early.

*

Lark says, “I’m worried about you.”

She remembers that tumbler who walked into her life and changed everything. She says, “I love you.” She always will, despite everything else.

“Goodnight,” Lark says.

*

She doesn’t sleep much anymore. Mostly, this is because of the dreams. This is a normal process that will take time, but she doesn’t talk about it, either. Lark would only worry if she came to breakfast one morning and said, “Everyone dies,” even if it is the truth.

*

She doesn’t talk to Lark about Crane because she’s still—even after all these years—worried that it will somehow hurt the other woman. She doesn’t talk to Crane about Lark because it doesn’t matter. It seems everything in her life is like that, now. It either matters too much or it doesn’t matter at all.

She’s come close to death twice now. She supposes it only makes sense. In a perverse way, maybe that’s the real reason she was always going into the Mire and helping people who were close to death themselves. Death puts everything else in sharp contrast, makes colors deeper and lines sharper than they were before.

Maybe she likes the feeling of urgency when Crane runs his hands over her hips and her body shudders. Maybe she likes the moments after, when he’s drowsy, head pillowed somewhere between her neck and shoulder and she feels heavy and seventeen again. Maybe she’s just crazy.

*

Everyone seems to believe that she’s doing the best. Briar probably still can’t sleep through the night, though she hasn’t heard from him since he and the girls left. Not that she’d expected to. Evvy still jumps at shadows and sleeps too lightly. She thinks that it’s the same for her, she’s just learned to hide the jumps and to pretend to sleep and to spend more time in her garden, a place that she can only picture burning some days.

She’s in her garden the morning Moonstream comes, allegedly to drink her tea, but almost too obviously to see if she’s still there mentally.

“I know I’m not there anymore,” she says, “But I can still see all those people. I can’t just forget.” She wishes Lark hadn’t insisted on staying for this, hadn’t insisted on holding her hand through the whole thing.

Moonstream sits quietly as Rosethorn talks, lips pursed, brow slightly furrowed. When it’s over, she says, “You shouldn’t just forget. That would be the worst thing you could do.” She nods, decisively, and starts talking about what she wants Rosethorn to do now—something about islands and bad crops.

Rosethorn is only half-listening. Instead she’s thinking about something Crane once said. She’d immediately told him it was trite, and she still believes that, but now she knows for sure why Moonstream came to visit. She sips her tea and hugs Moonstream before the Dedicate leaves.

*

“You _do_ need something to keep you occupied!” Crane says. “You’re just flitting around in that little garden of yours, not actually accomplishing anything.”

“I like my garden and it’s not little,” she says.

He waves a hand as if to say, _Semantics_. Instead, though, he actually says, “Beside the point. I was right to tell Moonstream my thoughts.”

“That remains to be seen,” she says, but she lets him kiss her anyway, though she pretends it’s because he asks if she remembers before, when they were just novices, and fighting over petty things. That’s not exactly how she remembers it—she was _never_ petty, for a start—but it sounds nice.

*

“He’s right, you know,” Lark says. “It _will_ be good for you.” She’s leaning against Rosethorn’s side, mending one of Evvy’s shirts, and not five minutes before, she’d been talking about Gorse’s new sweet buns.

The change in subject actually startles Rosethorn. She sits up straighter, jostling Lark.

“If you figured it out, I’d figure it out,” Lark says. “And he _is_ right, and you probably know it.”

“I’m fine,” Rosethorn says. What she means is that she’s fine here, with people she cares about. She’s fine here, where she can protect them.

Lark wraps her arms around the other woman. “I know,” she says. “And you’ll be even better when you come back.”

Rosethorn looks briefly to the sky, then kisses Lark’s cheek. “It’s not like you have to _convince_ me to go,” she says. “Of course I’m _going_.”

*

And she does go. She’s also the one who tells Evvy that she should come. Evvy complains, of course, because that’s what Evvy does. Rosethorn just shakes her head and says, “Water will be _good_ for you.” Evvy opens her mouth to ask for a better explanation than that, but Rosethorn doesn’t give her one.

The night before she leaves, she sleeps, and Lark sleeps with her.


End file.
